A Heated Debate Between Two Charismatic Geniuses: A Cardinal Fan (Jeff Lung) and a Tiger Fan (Allen Krause)

Results tagged ‘ Blogging ’

Congratulations to Kristen from This Is A Very Simple Game (a damn fine blog in its own right!) for winning the RSBS Biggest Fan Contest, sponsored by Crown Royal. Soon Kristen will be enjoying Albert Pujols in the bright SoCal sun with well protected eyes as she is going to receive a pair of sweet Oakley Blender Sunglasses. Hot dang!

And if that’s not hot enough, check out her winning entry below. Your taste buds will thank you!

Kristen writes:

Caramelized Red Onion State, Blue Cheese State, Bacon Lavosh!

This is a quick and dirty weeknight dinner that tastes gourmet and doubles nicely as a game day snack. But, since you can’t exactly tell how amazing this smells and tastes from the photo, here is the recipe. I get the impression that Johanna cooks but I don’t know if Jeff and Allen do, so the recipe is written for both the well stocked kitchen and the un-stocked kitchen:

Ingredients for 2 Lavosh:

5 slices of bacon (because, hello, Bacon? Is there any ingredient more charismatic?)

2 pieces lavosh (whole wheat works well here too. If you don’t have access to lavosh, what the heck kind of Trader Joe’s do you have there in Chicago? ;) And/or you can use pita, tortillas, or even pizza dough instead.)

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Crumbled Blue Cheese (roughly 4 oz. which is to say, basically a palm full. I don’t really prescribe to the tyranny of traditional “standard” measurements unless I am baking or performing some other form of chemistry, LOL.) I like Trader Joe’s Salem Blue or Point Reyes Blue Cheese if I have it around, but any will work.

Optional – 1/2 cup of _______ meat. I used leftover roast chicken the evening I took the photo because we roasted chicken-zilla earlier in the week and had it on hand. But diced deli meat works wonderfully too – turkey, roast beef or, if you’re feeling especially porcine inclined, ham or prosciutto (yum!).

Salt and pepper to taste (sea salt and fresh ground pepper if you have it, no worries if you don’t)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Cook the bacon until it is almost cooked to your preferred level of doneness, then set aside. Chop when cooled.

3. Heat the cooking fat (and use some of the bacon drippings for 1 tablespoon of the cooking fat , if you dare). Add the garlic (if you’re using fresh) and sauté for a few seconds before adding the onions.

4. Keep stirring the onions. Season with a little salt and pepper (and the dried garlic if you’re using dried) once the onions are coated in the oil. You want to almost fully caramelize the onions – sauté them, stirring from time to time, until they are browned slivers of completely limp, tasty oniony goo.

5. Put the lavosh on cookie sheets (or prep for a pizza stone if you have one and have time to heat it) and cover each of them in half of the mozzarella cheese in a thin layer stretching out to the edges.

6. Sprinkle each evenly with half of the bacon, cooked onions, blue cheese and extra meat (if you are using).

7. Dust both lightly with pepper.

8. Bake for roughly five minutes, turn and then five minutes more (much longer if you are using pizza dough), until the cheese is bubbly and golden in spots and the edges of the meat and lavosh are crisp and browning.

It’s a hard time to be an international baseball player. Of course we all heard about what happened with Wilson Ramos in Venezuela but as harrowing as that experience may have been, at least he came out of it alive. The same can’t be said of Seattle utility outfielder Greg Halman. Not only did he get stabbed to death back home in the Netherlands, it was his own brother who did it.

Luckily there’s one guy who always knows how to land on his feet. The most interesting man in the world, not content with just having a supermodel personal photographer, also appears to be branching out into the world of medicine:

Mr. Putin, I don’t know how you do it but you always manage to amaze us. You’ve even made dentistry pleasant, if that guy’s smile is any indication.

The RSBS crew understands how tough life can be when you’re forever being confused with someone else. Back when I was blond and Jeff had his mustache, we were often mistaken for Hall & Oates. Of course, it didn’t help that we regularly launched into spirited renditions of “Maneater” for these screaming fans but sometimes you just have to make lemonade out of the lemons.

Of course, it’s a little harder to make lemonade when your particular lemons involve war crimes and 42 years of repression. Just ask Carlos Santana.

In all honesty, I probably wouldn’t know Santana if he walked up to me on the street so it’s not out of the question that I might believe he was Gaddafi. However, since Gaddafi happens to be dead, well, you can see where the confusion might set in. I guess this is just what you have to deal with when you like the flashy clothes and curly locks:

I don’t really have any advice for Santana except for maybe a haircut. After all, that turned out to be the short-term answer for Jeff and I. Yep, it worked right up to the point when people started confusing us with my favorite Tigers’ double play combo, Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker. That’s definitely better than a dead dictator, though.

Oakley’s newest Blender shades are the perfect mix for active lifestyles. Lightweight C-5 alloy is combined with O-Matter earstems and sure-grip Unobtainium for unrivaled comfort and durability. Slide these on with confidence whether enjoying your Crown Royal on the mountain or by the beach!

Whoa! Hot dang! They had me at Unobtainium!

The Pass the Crown gift exchange will go on until December 15th. In that time, any one of the 17 remaining internet superstars can decide to steal our gift, in which case, we would get theirs, so stay tuned for any necessary updates.

Once our final prize is announced we will don one dear reader as the Ultimate RSBS Fan (must be 21 or older) and he/she will take home the goods! Remember to email us a picture showing why you are the Ultimate RSBS Fan to RSBSblog@gmail.com.

Also, don’t forget: if you like the snazzy embroidery on the signature Crown Royal bag, make sure you check out how you can personalize your very own! They make fantastic gifts. In fact, RSBS is thinking of getting one for new Cubs President Theo Epstein that reads: Whiskey… for when watching the Cubs 162 times a year is your job.

So now we need your help. We have until 4 p.m. ET today (11/17) to let Crown Royal know if we are going to keep our bag and open our gift or if we’re gonna swipe one of those already revealed. Since one of you will be the beneficiary, we want to hear your voice! Comment, email us (RSBSblog@gmail.com) or holla back on Twitter (@RSBS). We’ll be tweeting about it with the #PassTheCrown hashtag.

P.S. Like the embroidery work on that there CR bag? Then make sure to check out how to customize your own! They are available to adults (21+) on www.CrownRoyal.com for $9.95 and feature a max of 40 characters, making the perfect gift for the whiskey drinker in your life (if you’re like us, then you have a lot of those).

If there’s one thing the guys at RSBS have in common with the guys from Boardwalk Empire, it’s that we like our Canadian whiskey. And that we kind of resemble Steve Buscemi. But mainly it’s the whiskey.

So, when we got word of Crown Royal’s “Pass the Crown” promotion and found out that they wanted us to get involved, well, you can imagine our excitement. The best part is that we also get to reward one of our loyal readers. Yep, that’s right. You might get to share in our excitement!

The game works like your traditional Christmas party gift swap where the first person grabs a gift, opens it and then the next person can either pick another gift or take the one that the first person received. Our turn is this Thursday and we’ll be looking for you to tell us if we should steal one of the first three gifts or grab a new one from the middle. Of course, this all takes place in the virtual world of the blogosphere so tune in to RSBS and our Twitter feed (@RSBS) to let us know what you think we should do.

But here’s where it gets even more exciting. Whatever gift we end up with, one of our readers will get a matching version, including the possibility of a Crown Royal hosted happy hour! It only makes sense that a gift like this should go to RSBS‘s biggest fan so send pictures showing why you’re our biggest fan to rsbsblog@gmail.com and we’ll decide sometime around Christmas who wins. Since the contest is sponsored by Crown Royal, though, you need to be 21 or older to win.

It may feel like Prohibition all over again the way the economy looks but at RSBS, we’ve imported the fun from our neighbors to the north. There’s plenty for you, too, so make sure play along with us.

When you’re a baseball and politics blog, things get a little interesting when the baseball season ends and it’s an off year for elections. It’s like what you get in football when you’re up by four touchdowns with 30 seconds left to go. Even if I were put in the game to quarterback at that point, it would be pretty hard to lose.

Luckily, there’s an answer to garbage time and its name is YouTube. Today, in honor of Halloween, here’s a guy with waaaaay too much time on his hands. Which is not to say that it isn’t impressive:

The right of free speech ingrained into the Constitution our freedom to say whatever stupid thing might pop into our heads. In general, this is a good thing. Within certain reasonable limits, we can express our opinions on everything from foreign affairs to Fanta soda. It allows us to question whether or not the President of the United States is an American and then choose not to believe the facts when he presents his birth certificate. It’s a powerful right, even if it tends to be wasted on people who seem to exercise it the most wantonly.

I wouldn’t say I’m generally in favor of book burning but I understand the sentiment. One time while living overseas I received a package at my local post office. Now, to release packages from the postal system in this country, you were required to pay by weight. I didn’t have a lot of money but it was a package and I didn’t get a lot of them so I paid up. The box was somewhat heavy and came from my grandma so I rushed home to open it up. Imagine my surprise when I cut through the tape to find a bunch of Reader’s Digest magazines and Bible devotionals. Not one of my better days, I can assure you. And I’m pretty sure a few of those items went up in flames.

The point is, I can understand the need to burn something. Like how I wanted to burn my 2011 Detroit Tigers’ team program when they finished rolling over so the Rangers could finish them off. But instead I just use my Freedom of Speech and write about it. Hey, it could be a collectible one day. The writings of Bill O’Reilly? Not so much.

Do you guys drink beer and eat fried chicken and play video games while you’re supposed to be perfecting your craft?

KevinChicago, IL___________________________________

Frankly, Kevin, I’m insulted. That’s like going up to C.C. Sabathia and asking him if he sits around eating Krispy Kremes while he’s supposed to be working on his change-up. Look at the guy! You don’t get a body like that without a healthy serving of lard and/or hydrogenated fats at least twice a day.

The same is true of the RSBS team. We are a well-oiled machine and part of that oil comes from the grease collecting at the bottom of the multiple family size buckets of KFC original recipe chicken that we consume every single day. Sometimes the grease gums up the controllers of the Xbox forlornly attached to the 13-inch TV one of our mothers gave us in 1998 but luckily a splash (accidental or otherwise) of Schlitz or Milwaukee’s Best solves that problem.

Just kidding. Blogging is a grueling slog through the minefield that is humanity but it’s a slog we happily undertake for you, the reader, on a daily basis. Slogging, however, shouldn’t be entered into lightly. It’s a process, one that often begins with hours of painful research trying to come up with the perfect photo of the current Miss USA:

Or the ideal angle at which to view Ines Sainz:

Sure, it may look easy but there exists the rare occasion when the results more closely resemble the feces streaked walls of the primate cage at your local zoo. That doesn’t mean we didn’t try, though. Also, as a side note, who’s to say that design by defecation doesn’t constitute art?

The fact of the matter, Kevin, is that we’re here day in and day out to bring you a product that requires our full attention and a respect for our audience that belies any sort of orgy of fast food gluttony or the occasional video game bender. What we’re doing is too important to not take care of ourselves. And now that I have fully made my point, I feel vindicated in finishing the cold beer I cracked open while sitting down to write this. Hey, it’s only one out of three. That’s not so bad.

-A

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*The Filibuster will be taking its regular offseason hiatus starting next Sunday. Don’t worry, it will be back in time for Spring Training 2012, so keep a lookout! In the meantime, please enjoy our offhanded satire and scantily clad womenz who will take its place on Sundays during the Fall/Winter. Thank you to all who have written in!

As you probably know by now, last weekend I finally got to sit down with Jeff and Johanna to record an RSBS Podcast in person. The recording session took place around noon but the day didn’t end there. No, it continued for many hours, many drinks and many laughs. Sadly, though, we apparently did not party hard enough because it pales in comparison to the weekend Robert Young and Mark Rubinson had.

One of these days I’ll find myself back in the Chi and I hope we can take a mulligan on last weekend’s events. I think that if we really tried, we could even go so hard that we become Angels’ fans:

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